JOHN BROWN : A RETROSPECT. 



A Letter from John Brown never before in print. 
, Now in the possession of Sullivan Forehand, Esq., of Worcester. 



Springfield, Mass, i6th April, 1857. 

Hon. Eli Thayer, 

My Dear Sir 

I am advised that one of "U. S. 
Hounds is on my track" ; & I have kept myself hid for a few days to let my 
track get cold. I have no idea of being taken ; &= intend (//"God will" ;) to 
go back with Irons in rather than upon my hands. Now my Dear Sir let me 
ask you to ha\e Mr. Allen ^: Co. send me by Express ; one or two sample 
Navy Sized Revolvers ; as soon as may he ; together with his best cash terms 
(he warranting them) by the hundred with good moulds, flasks ; &c. I wish 
the sample Pistols sent to John (not Capt) Brown Care of Massasoit House 
Springfield, Mass. I now enclose Twenty Dollars towards repairs done for 
me ; >.\; Revolvers ; the balance 1 7oill send, as soon as I get the Bill. I have 
written to have Dr. Howe send iv^// by E.xpress a Rifle d- Two Pistols ; which 
7t'//// //te iri/ns yon gave me; &-- Jixings ; /oge //ler \\\lh. the Rifle given me by 
J//'. A//en &' Co. I wish them to pack in a suitable strong Bo.x ; perfectly 
safe directing to "jf. B care of Orson .M. Oviatt Iilsq. Cleveland Ohio ; as freight ; 
to kee]) dry. For Box, trouble ; & packing ; I will pay when I get bill. I 
wish the box very plainly marked ; cv: forwarded to Cleveland ; as soon as you 
receive the articles from Dr. Howe. I got a/V/c //j7in Boston the other day ; 
& hope Worcester will not be entirely behind. I do not mean you ; or Mr. 
Allen df Co. 

Very Respectfully Your l*'iiend 

Direct all letters (S: bills \ /, 

to care of .Massasoit House - '^ 

Please acknowledge 



S r/cr/y-ny Uf>^(run/l^ 




JOHN BROWN : A RETROSPECT. 






<^^> 



By ALFRED S. ROE. 



Read before The Worcester Society of Antiquity, Dec. 2, 



WORCESTER, MASS. : 

PRIVATE PRESS OF FRANKLIN P. RICE. 

MDCCCLXXXV. 



BUI 



a6\\ 



JOHN BROWN : A RETROSPECT. 



Nearly two thousand years ago, at the hour of noon, a motley 
throng of people might have been seen pouring forth from the gates 
of a far Eastern city and moving towards a hill called Calvary. 
Amidst soldiers and civilians, both friends and foes, the central 
figure is that of a man scarcely more than thirty years of age. He 
has all the attributes, in form and features, of true manliness. A 
disinterested judge has just declared that he finds nothing amiss 
in him ; but the rabble cry out, all the more, "crucify him." While 
ardently loved by a devoted few in that tumultuous crowd, he is, 
to all the rest, an object of severest scorn, the butt of ribald jest. 
Wearing his crown of thorns, he is made to bear, till he faints un- 
der his burden, the very instrument of his torture. His Roman 
executioners, giving to him the punishment accorded to thieves 
and robbers, have imposed upon him the most ignominious fate 
possible, — death upon the cross. 

A century before, Cicero had said : "It is an outrage to bind a 
Roman citizen ; to scourge him is an atrocious crime ; to put him 
to death is almost parricide ; but to crucify him — what shall I call 
it?" 

The place of crucifixion is reached. The dread tragedy is en- 
acted. The vail of the Temple is rent in twain ; but upon the 
trembling earth the cross stands firm ; from the consequent dark- 
ness it shines forth, resplendent by the halo of its precious burden. 
The Saviour of men is taken thence to lie in the tomb of Joseph 
of Arimathea ; his disciples and brethren wander away disconso- 
late ; his tormentors go their many and devious ways ; but the 
cross remains. It will ever remain ; the object of reproach and 
derision to the ancients, to the moderns it has become the symbol 



of all that is true and good. The scenes of that day, on which 
the son of man was lifted up have sanctified for all time the instru- 
ment on which he suffered ; transformed and radiant, it has become 
a beacon for all mankind. 

Twenty-five years ago to-day, at noon, nearly, Another crowd 
took its course from prison doors to a place of execution. We see 
a white haired old man escorted to his death by all the military 
strength that a great state can command. As he leaves his place 
of confinement he stoops and prints a kiss upon the face of a 
Negro baby. A black woman cries out to him, passing along, 
"God bless you, old man ; I wish I could help you, but I cannot." 
The most ignominious death known to our laws awaits him. Al- 
ready has the gibbet been erected. The sticks "standant and 
crossant" are in place, and the hungry rope is "pendant." A forty 
acre field is filled with those drawn together by this strange scene. 
Three thousand soldiers with loaded guns stand ready to repel any 
attempt at rescue. Well shotted cannon turn their open and angry 
mouths upon this one poor mortal. The bravest man there, he 
gazes upon the array before him, without a trace of emotion. The 
eye that shed tears at the sight of human misery is undimmed by 
what man can do against him. Beyond the cordon of foes he 
remarks the wonderful beauty of the scenery, the last he is to look 
upon. He has made his peace with God and has no other favor 
to ask of his executioners than that they hasten their terrible task. 
The drop falls and suspended 'tvvixt Heaven and Earth is the in- 
carnation of the idea that in a few brief months is to bring liberty 
to an enslaved race. Most appropriately did a Boston clergyman 
on the following Sunday announce for his opening hymn — 

"Servant of God, well done ! " 

The John the Baptist of sahation to the Negroes, he died a death 
excelled in sublimity only by that of the Saviour of men. Both died 
for men ; one, for all mankind, the other willing to risk all that he 
might open the prison (l(K)r to those confined, and to strike off the 
bands of those in bondage. 

And here, too, methinks a strange transformation has taken place. 
The rough, the terrible gallows loses its accustomed significance. 



7 

Its old time uses are forgotten. Arounrl it I see millions of men 
and women pointing to its sole occupant, saying, "He died that 
we might live." Even the scaffold may become a monument of 
glory, for from it a hero and a martyr passed to his reward. I for- 
get the base and criminal burdens it has borne, and see only the 
"hfting up" of the one man who had courage equal to his convic- 
tions. His martyrdom came ere he had seen 

"The Glory of the Coming of the Lord." 

Under the lofty Adirondacks his body was mouldering in the grave 
when Lincoln proclaimed liberty to the slave, 

" But his soul was marching on." 

During the twenty-five years intervening since the death of John 
Brown, the Drama of Life has been played with far more than the 
usual variation. In no equal space of time since the recording of 
events began, have more pages of history been turned than during 
the quarter of a century just closing. Owing to the efforts of Brown 
and others sympathizing with him, the Institution of Slavery had al- 
ready received many shocks ; but it was still active and aggressive. 
For ought man could see to the contrary, it was fated to exist many 
years yet. It held unchallenged, fifteen of the states in this Union 
and was making strenuous eftbrts to fortify itself in the territories 
of the West. A bishop in the freedom-loving state of Vermont 
was, twenty-five years ago, finding scripture argument for the main- 
tenance of Negro slavery. Across the Connecticut River, in New 
Hampshire, the head of her chief educational institution was 
teaching the young men under his care that slavery was of Divine 
origin, and, of course, as such must not be disturbed. In New 
York City, one of her foremost lawyers, Charles O'Conor, an- 
nounced to his audience that Negro slavery not only was not un- 
just, "But -it is just, wise and beneficent." Though there was dis- 
claim at this statement, the vast majority of his immense throng of 
listeners applauded the sentiment to the echo. In our own Com- 
monwealth, a human being had just been rendered back to slavery, 
and the most distinguished clergyman in Massachusetts had stood 



8 

a trial for endeavoring to prevent the everlasting disgrace. In those 
days between "Fifty and Sixty," "Uncle Tom's Cabin" meant some- 
thing. Its gifted author had set before every Northern reader a 
picture on which he could not look without blushing. Nearly all 
of us, here to-night, can recall the intense interest with which our 
parents perused the book. I well recall the burning face of my father 
as he turned page after page, and when, at times, tears coursed down 
his cheek I wondered what it was all about. He, too, had occa- 
sion to know how strong was the bond that Slavery had laid upon 
the Nation, in the opposition aroused among his own people through 
his pulpit utterances on the forbidden subject. In those days, the 
Underground Railroad was in full operation. The Southern Black 
Man, however deep his degradation, knew the North Star, and 
towards it he was journeying at the rate of thousands yearly. We 
of to-day account it among our most precious heritages that our 
sires and grandsires kept stations on that same road, and many an 
escaped bondsman looking back from his safe asylum in Canada 
called them "blessed." Eighteen Hundred and Fifty-nine was in 
the halcyon days of "Fugitive Slave Law" lovers. If John Wesley 
considered Slavery the "sum of all villainies," I wonder what terse 
definition he would have given to this the vilest enactment that 
ever rested on our Statute Book. Not satisfied with whipping, 
shooting, hanging, destroying in a thousand ways these unhappy 
slaves, the aggressive South forced upon a passive North a law whose 
enormity passes description. Every man at the beck of the South- 
ern kidnapper, by its provisions was obliged to play the part of a 
Negro catcher. So great was the passiveness of the North that 
her most eminent orator, instead of decrying the proposition as 
unworthy of humanity, even lifted up his voice in its defense. 
Virgil inveighed against the accursed thirst for gold — auri sacra 
fames ; but it was not this thirst that made him, ofttimes called 
the "Godlike," turn against all the traditions of his birth and 
associations, and speak words which closed to him F^neuil Hall, 
the Cradle of Liberty, and drew from Whittier the scathing lines of 

" Ichabod ! " 



But his thirst was not appeased, and the South before which he 
had prostrated himself, turned away from him, spurning his bribe, 
and made a nomination which terribly disappointed Webster, and 
on account of which he went down to his grave broken hearted. 
Imagine if you can the astonishment of the student a hundred years 
hence, when he reads that the highest judicial tribunal in the land, 
voiced through its aged though not venerable chief, said in the 
year of our Lord, 1857, and in the year of American Independence 
the eighty-first, that three millions of people, at that time repre- 
sented in Congress through an infamous scheme of apportionment, 
had no rights that a white man was bound to respect. Two judges 
of that court, and be it ever remembered to their credit, dissented. 
Through the worse than Cimmerian darkness that overspread the 
Supreme Bench of those days, the names of McLean and Curtis 
shine forth, the only rays of light ; and I may say with the excep- 
tion of that of Taney, remembered through his unique position, 
the only names recalled to-day. I doubt whether any present can 
name three out of the six judges who concurred with their Supe- 
rior in his opinion. It was the s^gt, par excellence, of spread-eagle 
oratory, when the American Bird soared higher and staid up longer 
than he ever has since. Hail Columbias and Star Spangled Ban- 
ners were in order, but the latter waved for the white portion of 
the people only. A flaunting mockery, our flag justly merited the 
reproach of other nations that pointed to our enslaved millions and 
then said : "Call ye that the Land of the Free and the Home of 
the Brave?" 

We know that all this is so, for we remember it ; but the student 
of the future must get his knowledge from books, and in the light of 
progress what will he think of defenseless women being mobbed in a 
Connecticut town for allowing Negro girls to attend their school ? 
Even now there is no distinction of color in our schools, and at 
the High School in this city, a colored girl has graduated whose 
foster father was a slave in Danville, Virginia, while the head mas- 
ter of the school was held there a prisoner of war. Side by side 
they sit in our schools of all grades, and, graduating from our Nor- 
mal Schools, become teachers in the schools themselves. He will 
read that Garrison, Phillips, Foster and others, were often in peril 



lO 



of their lives for preaching liberation of the slaves ; and how like a 
myth will it seem to him, when we, in twenty-five years from the 
death of John Brown, have seen colored men in both branches of 
the National Legislature, and to-day cannot look upon a lately 
issued Government Note without reading the name of one* who 
was once in bondage. Popular prejudice, the strongest barrier 
possible, is rapidly yielding ; and the bayonet, the ballot, and the 
spelling book, have wrought wonders. With all professions open 
to the colored man, with equal rights before the law, with millions 
of property accumulated since the war, who shall say that the soul 
of John Brown is not marching on? 

In the days prior to those of Harper's Ferry Raid, this good 
City of AVorcester, and the County of the same name, had spoken 
in no uncertain manner as to their appreciation of Slavery and its 
attendant evils. The first county in the Commonwealth to raise 
the question of the validity of Slavery in Massachusetts subsequent 
to the adoption of the Constitution, she well sustained her early 
acquired reputation in the more troublous times of later years. In 
1839, in this city was tried the famous Holden Slave Case, where 
a native of Worcester County had brought to her early home from 
her more recent Southern one, a specimen of human property 
in the shape of a black girl fourteen years old, by name Anne. 
By special enactment of Massachusetts no one could be held in 
bondage thus unless perfectly willing, and certain citizens of Hol- 
den, knowing that the treatment which the girl received could not 
be borne except under duress, secured her person, and bring- 
ing her to the Heart of the Commonwealth, made her "Free in- 
deed." For thus acting, these citizens were arrested and indicted, 
for just what, it seems difficult, at this time, to state ; but they were 
deemed or called culpable for having, without her consent, taken 
this girl, Anne, from bondage and actually giving her liberty. More 
than fifty years ago this, and how like a dream the whole matter 
seems. Ira Barton was the Justice of the Peace before whom one 
of the depositions was made. Solomon Strong, the earliest ap- 

*B. K. Bruce of Mississippi, nuu Register of the Treasury, formerly U. S. 
Senator. 



II 

pointed Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, the Judge who heard 
the case. PHny Merrick was the District Attorney who conducted 
the prosecution, and Charles Allen the Attorney who appeared for 
the defense. The trial had not advanced a great ways ere Mr. Mer- 
rick declared that there was no cause of action, and the jury at 
once acquitted the defendants. Charles Allen ! A host of recol- 
lections of the Free Soil and Anti-Slavery days spring into being 
at the mention of his name. He was the Massachusetts Whig who, 
in 1848, refused to bow the knee to the Southern Baal, and to his 
fellow members of the Convention, after the nomination of General 
Taylor dared to say : "You have put one ounce too much on the 
strong back of Northern endurance. You have even presumed 
that the State which led on the first Revolution for Liberty will 
now desert that cause for the miserable boon of the vice-presidency. 
Sir, Massachusetts spurns the bribe,''' referring thus to the proposed 
nomination of Abbott Lawrence. It was a brother of Charles Al- 
len, our late esteemed friend, the Rev. George Allen, who in the 
same year offered to a meeting in Worcester, the most famous 
resolution of the whole ante-bellum period. Catching the spirit 
of his brother's words, he said : "Resolved, That Massachusetts 
wears no chains and spurns all bribes ; that Massachusetts goes 
now, and will ever go, for free soil and free men, for free lips and 
a free press, for a free land and a free world." This was a good 
key-note, and when, six years later, in 1854, a slave-catcher came 
to this same city of Worcester, the citizens proved that they could 
raise the tune most readily ; and the would-be man-stealer was 
only too happy to march to its measures out of the city, without 
his booty, and possessed of a whole skin. Mr. Jankins, the object 
of Batman, the kidnapper's cupidity, during these intervening thirty 
years, has continued to live in this city, a respectable and respected 
citizen ; and has seen his children in the highest schools of the 
city. One, having graduated from the High School, is now in the 
Normal School. What a comment this, on the times when, in this 
Christian land, men and women were imprisoned for teaching 
black people how to read, — the Bible even. 

I doubt whether the people of Worcester were the very strictest 
interpreters of the law in the days when the life of John Brown was 



12 

in the balance. Of the technicalities of his offence it is not ours 
to judge. The people of the North who had made haste to rid 
themsel\-es of slavery, had viewed for years the aggressive unrest 
of the South. While civilized countries other than ours had for- 
ever abolished the wretched system, our country, led by its South- 
ern minority, had again and again done its best to bolster and up- 
hold it. The war with Mexico, the annexation of Texas, the Fu- 
gitive Slave Law, and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, were 
only successive sops thrown to the insatiable monster. The repeal 
of the Compromise opened the Territory of Kansas to both Slavery 
and Anti-Slavery, and henceforth Massachusetts speaks with no 
uncertain voice. John Brown and Charles Sumner simultaneously 
spring into renown and immortality. Both of Bay State antece- 
dents, their history is largely hers. One on the plains of Kansas 
fights for what he believes to be the right. His own blood and 
that of his sons flow in behalf of oppressed humanity. Border ruf- 
fians are driven back and a Free State Constitution adopted. Sum- 
ner, from his place in the United States Senate, boldly proclaims 
his sentiments on "The Crime against Kansas," and by an illus- 
trious scion of the Southern aristocracy is stricken down in a man- 
ner which "even thieves and cut-throats would despise." The 
contest was on, — any pause thereafter was only a temporary lull. 
In the language of New York's most distinguished Senator, it was 
"Irrepressible." John Brown had repeatedly led parties of slaves 
from Missouri to Kansas, and made of them free men. He con- 
templated other and grander strokes against the peculiar institu- 
tion. In his singleness of purpose, he saw not the power of the 
Government intervening, and perhaps, in his intensity, it would 
have made no difference if he had. Certain, however, is the state- 
ment, that the one grand idea over-towering all others in his mind, 
was that of liberty for the slaves ; and for that idea men of his own 
and subsequent days have done him reverence. 

Why review the scenes of those hours of attack and fierce de- 
fense at Harper's Ferry? Poorly informed, indeed, must be that 
American man or woman, boy or girl, who has not repeatedly read 
the events of those less than twenty-four hours of condensed history. 
I'hey furnish the prelude to every account of the War of the Re- 



bellion. No matter how vivid the scenes of later days, somewhere 
in the background we get these earlier details over again. The 
blow once struck, and there arose from Maine to Texas cries 
ranging through all the variations of surprise, exultation, and 
fiercest denunciation. I am speaking as a Northern man to North- 
ern people, and it is natural that we should look upon the acts of 
John Brown with quite different feelings from those held by the 
people who saw in them the uprooting of all the traditions and cus- 
toms of their society. For the present, however, I will confine my- 
self to the opinions of those who from the north side of Mason 
and Dixon's Line, heard the "clash of resounding arms." There 
were many men who had in various ways assisted Brown in his 
work without knowing just what his plans were. It sufficed for them 
to know that he was to harry the Institution, leaving to him the 
perfecting and executing of details. The telegraphic dispatches 
on that Monday morning of October i yth, carried consternation 
into other homes than those of the South. It seemed reasonable 
to the Government that men who had contributed in any way to 
the support of John Brown must have been privy to his plans. How- 
ever much we may pride ourselves now that such and such men 
assisted the movement, then the barest suspicion of complicity 
made many households look to their hearths. Some, whose names 
had been mingled with his, sought refuge in Canada, as Dr. S. G. 
Howe, Frederick Douglass and F. B. Sanborn. Gerrit Smith of 
New York, worn out by previous hard work, was by this final bur- 
den reduced to a condition necessitating his removal to the Utica 
Asylum. Now that the affair is all over and past, it seems very 
strange that men like those mentioned before, who were known to 
be intimate with the Revolutionist, were not made to suffer at the 
hands of the law. The only explanation that occurs to me is that 
public opinion, while it might not stay the hand of the executioner 
in Virginia, most resolutely opposed his crossing the line. "The 
New York Democratic Vigilance Association" issued a manifesto 
breathing forth threatenings against all those implicated in the 
matter, but it came to nothing. Every movement of the trial was 
followed with the closest interest, and Massachusetts sent down a 
man to assist in the defense who became, in after years, one of her 



H 

most famous sons. It is certain that the experience of these weeks 
at Harper's Ferry gave John A. Andrew the prompting to the ex- 
traordinary zeal with which he entered upon the duties of his gu- 
bernatorial office less than two years afterward. The whole trial 
seems farcical ; but we must admit that a show of fairness was had, 
and, considering the ferocity with which the old man was attacked 
when down in the Engine House, the only wonder is that he was 
granted a trial at all. Through all the trying hours of that ordeal 
how like a hero did he deport himself ! Grand in his assaults on 
the citadel of slavery, he became grander still as he calmly met his 
enemies, and told them of his purposes. Never boastful, he as- 
sumes nothing, but at the end, when asked to say why sentence of 
death should not be imposed upon him, he said : "The Court ac- 
knowledges, as I suppose, the validity of the Law of God. I see 
a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the 
New Testament. That teaches me that all things 'whatsoever I 
would that men should do unto me I should do even so to them.' 
I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say, I am yet too 
young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I be- 
lieve that to have interfered as I have done, as I have always freely 
admitted I have done, in behalf of His despised poor, was not 
wrong, but right. Now, if it is deemed necessary that I should 
forfeit my life for the furtherance of the ends of justice, and min- 
gle my blood further with the blood of my children, and with the 
blood of millions in this slave country, whose rights are disregarded by 
wicked, cruel and unjust enactments — I submit ; so let it be done." 
Even if we grant that he was technically wrong we must accord to 
him the meed of perfect sincerity. Whatever his fliilings he had 
not that of lying. "Greater love hath no man than this that a man 
lay down his life for his friends." John Brown fulfilled the highest 
interi)retation of this Scriptural maxim. The edict once published, 
and all over the North there was a feeling of the deepest sympathy. 
There was nothing that could be done. People must wait and 
meditate. Just enough more than a month to bring the execution 
on Friday was accorded the condemned man, for it was on Mon- 
day the 31st of October that the trial was ended, and the sentence 
was pronounced the following day. 



15 

During this month follow the letters, the sermons, the speeches, 
the editorials, the thinking, that were the immediate results of the 
attack. Never had the subject of Negro Slavery been so thoroughly 
ventilated. The liberation of the Slave was coming, and that speed- 
ily through the agency of Brown, but not in the way he had intended. 
While audiences throughout the North, and South, too, were roused 
to fever heat through the presentations, in different lights it is true, 
of this cause, the prime mover in the matter was making his final 
preparations for departure. Preparations, I say, not in the sense 
that we ordinarily give the word, for of his own future he had no 
doubt, but in that of care for the families of his stricken followers. 
To Mrs. Lydia Maria Child he writes asking her assistance in be- 
half of his daughters-in-law, whose husbands, his sons, fell by his 
side, three daughters, his wife, Mrs. Thompson whose husband 
fell at Harper's Ferry, and a son unable to wholly care for himself. 
To a Quaker lady of Newport, R. I., he sends asking her to write 
and to comfort the sad hearts at North Elba, Essex County, N. Y. 
To his wife " 'Finally, my beloved, be of good comfort.' May all 
your names be 'written on the Lamb's book of life — may you all 
have the purifying and sustaining influence of the Christian religion 
is the earnest prayer of your affectionate husband and father, John 
Brown. P. S. I cannot remember a night so dark as to have hin- 
dered the coming day, nor a storm so furious or dreadful as to pre- 
vent the return of warm sunshine and a cloudless sky. But, be- 
loved ones, do remember that this is not your rest ; that in this 
world you have no abiding place or continuing city. To God and 
his infinite mercy I always commend you. J. B." 

And thus he wrote to his half-brother, to his old schoolmaster, 
to his son Jason, and to many others. Every word is expressive 
of the deepest anxiety for the welfare of his loved ones, and a 
calm trust in the God of all as to the righteousness of his cause. 
Such words and such behavior do not comport with the "black 
heart" which a large part of the nation was then ascribing to him. 
It is true, he told a clergyman of a Southern church who attempt- 
ed to draw an argument in defence of Slavery, that he did not 
know the A B Cs of Christianity since he was entirely ignorant of 
the meaning of the word, "I, of course, respect you as a gentleman, 



i6 

but it is as a heathen gentleman." I can, myself, appreciate to 
some extent what must have been the feelings of the prisoner at 
the religious ministrations offered him ; for I well remember with 
what a skeptical air I heard the prayer and the words of a Rebel 
clergyman who visited the prison in which I was confined in 1865. 
I knew he was daily praying God to bring defeat to my comrades 
in arms, to increase the number of prisoners, in fine, for the tri- 
umph of the Confederate cause. He undertook a pretty serious 
task, that of talking entertainingly in a general way to a company 
of Federal prisoners. Had he come to kneel by the side of a dy- 
ing man, and to point the way to eternal life, it had been different ; 
but for doctrinal policies what cared we? We had empty stom- 
achs, and till they were filled all creeds were alike illusory. Preach- 
ing to hungry men was not a success, and he came but seldom — 
indeed I remember only once. Dead men were carried out daily, 
but they went unattended by religious rites. I recall now the 
thought, if God heard his prayer and answered it, of what avail 
was mine ; but I was certain that mine was the one listened to, 
and that being the case, of what avail was his opinion on the state 
of the country any way? During these weeks the condemned man 
is visited by large numbers of people, both friends and foes ; but 
before no one does he for a moment weaken in his constant declar- 
ation of the correctness of his cause. Some of the verbal shot 
that his proslavery interlocutors received were as hot as those which 
he fired from his musket into their midst on that terrible Monday 
— for instance, he told Col. Smith, of the Virginia Military Insti- 
tute, that he would as soon be escorted to his death by blacklegs 
or robbers as by slave-holding ministers. Socrates, awaiting the 
death which slowly creeps from his extremities to his heart con- 
verses not more quietly and resignedly to those about him than does 
this decided old man of Harper's Ferry. One, a Stoic, discourses 
on Death and Immortality ; and dying, desires his followers to of- 
fer a cock to ^sculapius. The other, a Christian, ceases not to 
converse concerning the wrongs of an oppressed race, and of his 
deep anxiety for the slaves ; and his last written words were : 'T, 
John Rrown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty 
land will never be pin-ged awa\' but with blood. I had, as I now 



17 

think, vainly flattered m5'self that without very mucli bloodshed it 
might be done." [December 2nd, 1859.] 

Our retrospect would be incomplete did we not recall the events 
happening in this very City of Worcester, twenty-five years ago to- 
day. Never were the pulsations of the "Heart of the Common- 
wealth" more in accord with the heart beats of humanity than on 
that second of December, 1859. Whatever the thoughts and 
words of truckling people in other places, here the tolling bell spoke 
unmistakably to all who heard, the sorrow of those who mourned 
the death of the Great Liberator. The Spy of December 3d de- 
votes two columns to an account of the observances in this city. 
From this description I learn that from ten o'clock, a. m. till noon, 
and again, from seven to seven and one-half o'clock, p. M., the 
bells of the Old South, the Central, the Union, and the Third Bap- 
tist churches were tolled. During the tolling of the bells in the 
forenoon, the engines at Merrifield's buildings, and at the card 
manufactory of T. K. Earie & Co., were stopped, while their places 
of business were closed, bearing appropriate symbols of regret and 
mourning. The colored people generally closed their places of 
employment, and engaged in appropriate religious exercises in 
Zion's Church in the afternoon. Earlier than had been advertised 
Mechanics Hall was thronged to its utmost capacity, in the vast 
audience there being as many women as men. Three sides of the 
walls bore placards on which were the words : 

"Whether on the scaffold high, 

Or in the battle's van, 
The fittest place where man can die 

Is where he dies for man." 

At half-past seven o'clock Hon. W. W. Rice called the meeting to 
order, saying : "There is no true man that does not feel his bosom 
swell with indignation and grief, and pray that God will watch over 
this land with his especial care. For Virginia has, to-day, exe- 
cuted a man, who, by the judgment of this community, is guilty of 
no moral crime ; but for his fidelity to the principles which his own 
soul told him were truths and duty. And we are met to hear the 
words of our best and most eloquent men, and to tender our aid 



i8 

and sympathy to the family — that family in whose veins flows the 
blood of the martyr, Brown." In closing, Mr. Rice, who had been 
hearil with repeated applause, read the following list of officers : 

President : Dea. Ichabod Washburn ; Vice-Presidents : Hon. 
John Milton Earle, Hon. Peter C. Bacon, Hon. George F. Hoar, 
Hon. W. W, Rice, Hon. Lemuel Williams, Albert Tolman, William 
T. Merrifield, George M. Rice, Hon. Austin L. Rogers, Edward 
Earle, John D. Baldwin, George W. Russell, Abram Firth, Joseph 
P. Hale, Dr. S. Rogers, William R. Hooper, Benjamin Goddard, 
Joseph Pratt, Harrison Bliss, Thomas Tucker, Rev. Horace James, 
Rev. Merrill Richardson, Rev. Ebenezer Cutler, Rev. R. R. Ship- 
pen, Rev. J. H. Twombly, Rev. George Allen, Rev. T. W. Higgin- 
son. Rev. Peter Ross, Rev. William H. Sanford, Rev. Samuel 
Souther, Dr. Joseph Sargent, Dr. William Workman, Dr. O. Mar- 
tin, Dr. T. H. Gage, Marcus Barrett, \Varren U'illiams, Thomas L. 
Nelson, Hartley Williams, Edwin Draper, S. A. Porter, Jonathan 
Day ; Secretaries : Charles E. Stevens, D. A. Goddard, Joseph 
H. Walker. 

Deacon Washburn, in taking the chair, called on the Rev. Mr. 
Richardson to open the further exercises with prayer, after which 
he read the following letter inclosing twenty dollars ; 

Worcester, Dec. 2, 1859. 
Dear Sir : I shall not be able to unite with you as I had hoped and 

expected, in your meeting of sympathy and charity. The noble and heroic 
old man who loved the cause that we love, and who has been faithful unto 
death to the principles as he understood them, of the religion which we pro- 
fess, has bequeathed to the friends of liberty the charge of comforting the 
desolate old age of his widow, and providing for the education of his father- 
less children. The charge is too sacred to be declined. 

Permit me to enclose, which would be of more value than anything I could 
say at present, a slight contribution toward this object. 

Vours respectfully, G. F. Hoak. 

The Speeches that followed were of a particularly eloquent na- 
ture. Why should this be otherwise ? Never had men a grander 
theme nor more sympathetic listeners. The Rev. Mr. Shii)pen, 
among other glowing passages, said : "John Brown felt as Crom- 



19 

well felt that he was commissioned by God to fight against the 
wrong. Believing in that eternal judgment based upon the law 
more lasting than the temporary statutes of to-day, he acted in ac- 
cordance with the spirit of the Gospel, as he in his conscience 
understood it." Hon. D. F. Parker was glad to honor John Brown 
because he dared, upon slave soil, to strike the blow he did. 
"Whenever wrong exists, it is our duty to wage war against it, with 
peaceful remedies if possible, if not, then with such as our grand- 
sires used in settling accounts with their oppressors." 

The Rev. Mr. Richardson was particularly apt — I may say, grand- 
ly prophetic. Thus : "Never at the beginning of great periods in 
history was insurrection so successful as that. It has made it ap- 
parent that slavery can and must be abolished ; it has set every 
press and every tongue in the land to agitating the subject of sla- 
very, and has made the pillars of that institution to rock and reel. It 
has diminished the value of slave stock. Two hundred million 
dollars, says a Southern paper, John Brown destroyed that Sunday 
night, and has led how many families to look for a speedy and 
certain method of getting rid of the perilous property. That man 
whom we wrong in calling crazy, was groping for the pillars of the 
slave institution, and he has been successful." Then came Rev. 
T. W. Higginson who had known much of Brown's plans, and to 
whom the prisoner had written only a short time before his execu- 
tion. "How little, one year ago to-day, we expected to hear such 
words from men who have been deemed conservative ; words 
so heroic, so absolute in defense of principle ; and I have wished 
the pen to record the thoughts which lie behind the faces we all 
meet ; the anxious, the determined, the desperate faces, the varied 

faces that meet us John Brown is now beyond our reach ; 

but the oppressed for whom he died still live. Methinks I hear 
his voice speaking to you in the words of that Scripture which he 
loved, 'Inasmuch as ye did it to these little ones ye did it unto me.' " 
The collection that was taken up for the family amounted to 
$145.88. Afterward Homer B. Sprague, Principal of the High 
School, spoke, as did Mrs. Abby K. Foster, both in an eloquent 
and forcible manner. At half-past ten o'clock the meeting ad- 
journed, the large audience remaining to the end. 



20 

Milford, Millbury and Fitchburg, in this County, in a similar 
manner took notice of the sad event. In the Legislature, then in 
session, there was a movement made in both houses to secure an 
adjournment. Though defeated, the motion drew out pretty gen- 
erally the sentiments of the members. Many of these voting against 
adjournment, admired the martyr ; but objected to leaving the 
business of the day, saying that Brown himself would counsel con- 
tinued attention to proper legislative duties. 

From the vantage ground of twenty-five years after, it is interest- 
ing to read what leading exponents of public opinion said then. 
From the South there came but one cry. It was to be expected. 
Nothing else could have been tolerated. From the North there 
was a diversity of language. 

The New York Trilnine of December 3d said, and 1 can believe 
that Greeley himself wrote the words : "John Brown, dead, will 
live in millions of hearts, will be discussed around the homely 
hearth of Toil, and dreamed of on the couch of Poverty. . . . Yes, 
John Brown, dead, is verily a power like Samson in the falling tem- 
ple of Dagon, like Ziska, dead, with his -skin stretched over a drum 
head still routing the foe he bravely fought while living." The 
New York Herald of the same date, voicing the sentiment of those 
who actively or passively upheld slavery, alludes to the Hero as 
"Old John Brown, the culprit, hanged for murder," etc., and states 
that the South was correct. The Boston Courier wishes Ciovernor 
Banks to ask the Legislature to make an appropriation of $40,000 
to assist Virginia in paying the bills incident to the Trial. If I am 
not mistaken, it was this same Courier's editor, one Homer l)y name, 
who, some years before, had placarded the city to excite a riot 
against Thompson, the English Emancipationist, and who had been 
largely instrumental in fostering trouble for (iarrison and Phillips. 

If we only knew that we were jirophesying at the time ! Little 
(lid the 'i'ribune writer think that his allusion to Ziska would pro\e 
almost literally true. In two years from the death of John Brown 
the Twelfth Regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, the Fletcher 
Webster Regiment, marched down the streets of Boston to the 
words : 



21 



"John Brown's body lies a moldering in the grave," 

and like magic the whole Union Army took it up, nay more, those 
who stood behind the army, young and old. Men and women 
sung it from Maine to California. No one knows who wrote it — 
it was unwritten. It was the popular idea, inspired by God, given 
vocal expression. There was nothing to learn about it. Every- 
body knew it before he heard it. Once raised the tune was chanted 
till the war was over, and its mission accomplished. It closed not 
then ; for to-day, after our lapse of a quarter of a century, it is the 
tune of all others that fires the Nation's heart. Ziska's drum head 
is immortal. Early in the War a large prize was offered for com- 
petidon, to those who would try to write a National Hymn. True, 
we had "America," but it was sung to the tune of "God save the 
King or Queen." "The Star Spangled Banner," but it ran so high 
that few attempted it. "Red, White and Blue," and "Hail Co- 
lumbia" ; but they were not adapted to the popular demands. A 
National Hymn was demanded, and a committee of meritorious 
gentlemen gravely sat down to decide on the merits of more than 
five bushels of poems. Twelve hundred poetasters had sent in 
their lucubrations, over three hundred of these sending music 
also, and what came of it? Nothing, of course. Lowell can write 
an ode that will make our cheeks tingle. Bayard Taylor has 
written them that exalted us with pride; but neither of these men,, 
nor any other, could sit down and in repose — in cold blood as it 
*were — write a National Hymn. What was wanted was another 
Marseillaise, something which all could readily grasp and hold, 
something that no man or woman could help singing, no matter 
whether they had ever sung before or not. Roget de Lisle, amid 
the terrible scenes of the French Revolution, and stung almost to 
madness by the terrible events about him, in a single night gave 
expression to a hymn that, in power, has been approached by only 
one other, that of "John Brown's Body." Are there not points of 
resemblance ? Both stir the soul in the chorus. The "Aux amies, 
Aiix armes,'' of the Frenchman's song is reproduced in our "Glory, 
Glory, Hallelujah !" No man will take either hymn off by himself 
to learn it. They are in his mind already ; but he is never con- 



22 

scions of them till the proper moment draws them forth. Our 
National Hymn has no parentage. I have heard men thrillingly 
relate the fever of patriotism into which the singing of its words 
threw them, as a regiment would file along the streets of our great 
cities during the war. There is not much to it in point of words. 
Such hvmns need few words. 

"John Brown's body lies a mouldering in the grave." 
"He has gone to be a soldier in the Army of the Lord." 
"We will hang Jeff Davis to a sour apple tree." 

There they are, the three stanzas ; but they have been sung more 
times, especially the first one, than any equal number of words 
ever put to music in America. Put in one sum the times the 
name of Lincoln, the Martyred President, and Grant, the Peerless 
General have been uttered, and it would not make a hundredth 
part the number that represents the utterance of John Brown's 
name in this song. Some one will say it cannot be a National 
Hymn imless sung by all parts of our people. Millions of people 
in the South, true of dusky faces, sung it, and how they sung it. 
It is more than sentiment, it is life to them ; and I am sanguine 
enough to believe that the time will come when those who wore 
the gray in our Great Contest will so far have seen the error of 
their position as to join with us of the other side in singing 

"(;i(5ry, (llory, Hallelujah," 

over the tact that the soul of John Brown is marching on. ) 

What think ye of John Brown ? Have the widely separated opin- 
ions of twenty-five years ago approached, or are they even more 
divergent? Of course, the active thinkers and workers of that day 
have joined the great majority. A younger and later generation 
has the conduct of affairs. In the main, those who hated him then 
hate him now. Those who thought him a martyr then are sure of 
it now. Perhaps we are still too near the events that made him 
famous to propedy weigh and criticise the evidence ; but what we 
write now, with what has been written, must be the source of future 



conclusions. As to the South, it is far too early to expect other 
♦ than the most rancorous feeling towards him. More than many of 
us are willing to admit, we are the creatures of our surroundings, 
men, thinking and acting as we have been reared. John Brown 
put himself in direct opposition to all that made the South dis- 
tinctive ; and, however much I may blame the section for its con- 
tinued hold on Slavery, I cannot think it strange that the inhabi- 
tants looked upon the Liberator with feelings quite the reverse from 
ours. For those, however, of equal privileges with ourselves, of 
substantially the same rearing, I have not the same measure of 
charity. In 1880 one G. W. Brown, M. D., of Rock ford, Illinois, 
formerly the editor of a paper in Kansas, gave himself the trouble 
to write a pamphlet in which he spares no effort to calumniate the 
Old Hero. I quote a notice of it from the Boston yournal : 

"The writer. Dr. G. W. Brown, in slip-shod and often ungram- 
matical English assails the memory of Old John Brown, charges 
him with active participation in various bloody crimes, and abuses 
his biographers and eulogists. Dr. Brown writes as an eye-witness 
of many of the things which he describes ; but of his credibility we 
have no means of judging save so far as the bitterness of his tone 
casts suspicion on his veracity." 

Happily we are able to tell just what Brown himself thought of 
his detractor, and of the paper that he conducted ; for in July, 
1858, writing to F. B. Sanborn, he says: "I believe all honest, 
sensible Free State men in Kansas consider George Washington 
Brown's Herald of Freedom one of the most mischievous, traitor- 
ous publications in the whole country." 

"A murderous fanatic and midnight assassin" is what the Louis- 
ville yournal calls him. Just what the same paper calls Mr. Phil- 
lip Thompson, Member of Congress from Kentucky, I cannot 
state ; but from the generally warped nature of its judgment I am 
not disposed to set much store by its opinion of him of Harper's 
Ferry. 

"Without doubt he suffered the just recompense of his deeds," 
says one who twenty-five years ago was loud and eloquent in his 
denunciation of the "taking off." This man has since sat in Con- 
gress with hosts of Rebel brigadiers, has shaken by the hand 



24 

Chalmers of Fort Pillow infamy, has listened to the reconstructed 
ex-Vice- President of the Confederacy on the floor of the House 
of Representatives. There is something wrong here, and I leave 
it to the lawyers to decide where. Brown had no malice against 
individuals, hence to have hung him for murder was wrong. If he 
suffered death for treason against the United States, then what a 
gigantic wrong has been done in admitting to the highest offices 
those who likewise were treasonable. For myself, I am ready 
to affirm that if the present status of affairs is right, there was most 
grievous wrong done Brown. The larger and more extended the 
treason only adds so much more to the crime. Perhaps had the 
"reconstruction" following his foray been associated with more 
ballots, or in other words, had conciliation been necessary to the 
proper maintenance of a particular party, perhaps, I say, he had 
been not only pardoned but elected to Congress. 

Fate has assigned to John Brown one of the highest niches in 
the Temple of Fame. Thinking only of the name that must be 
his through all time, I would not have the Past undone ; but to- 
night, after so many days, it is not amiss to ask ourselves "what 
might have been?" Granting that the death struggle between 
Slavery and Freedom was to come in 1861, what a part in it must 
this grand old man have borne ! With his terrible earnestness and 
indomitable will, with his ability to weld as it were, to himself all 
those who came under his influence, what an avenger he would 
have been on the tracks of such chivalrous Southerners as Quan- 
trell of Lawrence-burning notoriety, and those who at Fort Pillow 
and at Plymouth, N. C, carved out for themselves eternal infamy. 
I cannot think of him as a general commander ; but as a leader of 
scouts, as the head of a band to hang on the skirts of an enemy, 
he had been invaluable. All this, however was not to be. He 
was to do his part ; but it was as a hastener rather than a partici- 
pant in the struggle. To please the Southern Herodias his head 
lay gory in the charger before the contest which he had preached 
began. 

The contest came. We fought and won. The prime cause of 
all our woes exists only as a page, a dark page of history ; but on 
the margin of that page, and on those of every subsequent page, 



25 

methinks an unseen hand writes in indelible characters the part 
sustained by that unconquerable leader. 

To this day there are those who have halted and hesitated as 
to the Right in the War of the Rebellion. To me the question no 
more admits of doubt than does the distinction between daylight 
and darkness. In fact we were in darkness, and God said "Let 
there be light," and immediately the darkness and gloom of op- 
pression disappeared. Shall I, then, hesitatingly say ^^God knows 
which was right"? I will say it, but with a different inflection; 
fjr not only does He know, but I know, every one who has seen 
the wonderful change since the contest, knows that God smiled on 
our cause. With this deep conviction, then, in our hearts is it not 
meet that we should keep ever green the memory of the man who 
more than any other, appreciated the exigencies of the hour, who 
first fell in his devotion to the cause? In these twenty-five years 
his spirit has been joined by those of Sumner, Greeley, Garrison, 
Giddings, Phillips, Foster and the many, many thousands who 
toiled for the wronged of whatever color. Truth, though for a 
time crushed to earth, has risen again. Freedom reigns indeed in 
the land of John Brown. 

" His soul is marching on." 



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